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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493598">A Morrow Barren Of Promise</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelkundeath/pseuds/ivelkundeath'>ivelkundeath</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>RWBY</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, The White Fang, Trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:56:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493598</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelkundeath/pseuds/ivelkundeath</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She was her father's guarantee, and she wasn't sure if she could run from an inevitability. But she would try. On a train, as no one, bound for nowhere, she meets a stranger that stirs in her the genuine belief in the possibility that she could emancipate herself from the hands that claimed to own her life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Would you like Lien back?"</p><p>"I would, thank you. What is the maximum amount I can get back?" She always waited with a patient smile for the cashier to get past her foreign accent to offer her the option for an overage on her purchase, her face a chiseled, stone visage of courtesy. Her motives ulterior, she didn't want to give away her calculations despite being a ways away from anyone who would be suspicious of her behavior. She didn't know why she fixed herself with such pretenses when no one was around to spy her intentions, but a lifetime of petty and grand pretending was a conditioned response she would be hard pressed to undo.</p><p>
  <em>"You're not keen on retiring are you Father? I never thought I'd see the day." A teasing response to dull the edge this conversation was pressing to her throat.</em>
</p><p><em> "Hardly, my dear. I still plan to dedicate years to solidifying the Schnee empire. You wouldn't see yourself as head for decades still. But, despite how I may plot to defy anything that would hinder my plans, </em>life<em> could still potentially upset the guarantees I've assured for myself. The sooner you start acclimating yourself to your eventual role as head of the SDC, Weiss, the stronger my guarantees can be. You've been travelling for six months now. There is only so much of Remnant to see."</em></p><p>
  <em> "I won't have much opportunity for leisurely travel when I return to Atlas, Father. I'd rather like to get it out of my system now." A submission in order to make her desire for freedom seem a phase that needed to be passed like a bowel movement.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Fair enough. You may continue your travels, but Weiss, I'd like to see you back in Atlas soon."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Yes, Father." </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She was never going back to Atlas.</em>
</p><p>She sat on a train now bound for Vale, her hair damp from boarding during a particularly horrid torrential downpour that was common in the Mistralian North during the Summer. The train was set to depart in a half an hour, her anticipation mounting for the added distance it would put between her and her "home" as well as the anonymity it would give her. She'd been on trains for most of her travels, just watching the world pass by her from behind many a glass pane. She had elected to buy the top tier boarding passes for several train lines in advance that gave her broad windows for when and where she wanted to travel. It was as off-grid as she could get for large stretches of time. Airports wouldn't take payments from the third-party application she had routed all of her cards through, she found, so she chose to travel by train instead. Riding endless lengths on the Transcontinental had grown to be her peace over the past six months. Riding for days at a time and observing the ever-changing landscapes. She would be going somewhere without being anywhere or anyone in particular.</p><p>The door to her cabin opened, startling her from her thoughts as she waited for the tell-tale heave that signaled the train was departing. More an automatic response than a gesture to greet whoever was entering, she locked eyes with the person who would be her cabin mate for the next several days. Amber eyes steady and discerning, yet soft pierced into hers. For a moment something akin to curiosity flashed through the amber, as though her own eyes belied something only that woman was able see through to. But it passed so quickly she could almost accept that she imagined it.</p><p>"Hello," the woman greeted her in a monotone voice that neither conveyed acceptance nor rejection of the preoccupancy of the cabin.</p><p>"Good evening," she replied just as evenly before turning her attention back out the window. The woman began to silently deposit her luggage into the compartment beneath her bunk. The gesture made her grateful that the woman wasn't keen on empty, surface conversation. She'd had several cabin mates over the course of the past six months. A very few of those who had been inclined toward talking had been pleasant company, mostly because their conversations were intermittent ones where words had been deliberately used and meaningful, but the majority were not, and she found herself more grateful for the times she had bee alone in the cabin. The woman sat in the seat across from her, tucking her short, black hair crowned by a matching bow behind her ear before pulling a book from her shoulder bag, reinforcing her commitment to her silence. They sat that way for an indeterminable amount of time, the silence easy and neutral, before that familiar lurch signaled the train's departure from the station. And shortly after, the world began again to pass her by. She relaxed more into her seat with an almost inaudible sigh, her anxieties from being stationary greatly alleviated by the motion she felt beneath her despite the presence of a stranger just across from her. She stole a glance at the other occupant and found amber eyes, keen and focused as though trying to decipher something, looking at her over the top of her book. The sudden attention made her wary and uncomfortable, and as a result, her born and bred hostility began to rise in her. "<em>Yes?</em>" The woman lowered her book to reveal a placid expression. Neutral, yet soft.</p><p>"It's nothing. You just seem more relaxed now that we've left." The woman's statement wasn't audacious, her prolonged speech betraying a bit of an accent that she wasn't familiar with, but the woman's inclination to point out such a thing was.</p><p>"I'd just much rather be on my way," she dismissed defensively as she returned her gaze outside, a disdain for this woman's observant nature brewing in her. The brew was able to quell itself as the woman returned to her book, a 'neither here nor there' air about her in regard to their brief interaction. The nonchalance began to put her back at ease as the woman didn't seem to have any concern for her. Silence surrounded them again and rain streaked the windows as the train picked up speed. The world outside was a smear of grays and black under the ever waning sunlight behind water heavy clouds. The woodlands were thick and dense unlike anything she'd seen prior to leaving the cold modernization of Atlas. Only in the mornings of early fall and late spring semesters during her times on the top floor of her Alma Mater's library was she able to see the trees in the great distance along the horizon line. Any other time up there and the snow topped trees were lost along the horizon amongst all the white that seemed to plague Atlas's architecture. She had spent most of the three days of her last stop walking the winding paths through the public forest from noon until evening just marveling at the trees, their great boughs, and their shielding canopies. She decided then, hand outstretched to the heavens as she stood under a towering example of nature's longevity and persistence, that she would want to have a home in a place where there was an abundance of trees.</p><p>
  <em>"The presence of nature in civilization is rather antiquated. The faunus' attachment to that desolate patch of land only shows how close they are to barbarism." It was dinner at the Schnee estate. Her brother was speaking on the imminent deforestation of land in Mantle for a new dust refining facility in their father's favor. "You'd think they'd want to be more industrialized."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Sterile one might call it," she chimed in.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Ah, yes dear sister. I forgot you held such disdain for Atlas's color palette. It's all the same to Winter." She knew he was speaking about the season, but the thinly veiled turns in his voice around the words conveyed a snide comment toward their sister in its lining.</em>
</p><p><em> "Those faunus will assimilate or be stamped down," their father stated. "There are far more in favor of the refining facility than opposed. Their.. </em>cause<em> doesn't grant them much leverage given that the war treatises have long expired. They are doing nothing more than squatting on that land. Land that I will buy right from under them."</em></p><p>"Do you mind?" She was startled from the memory by the other passenger. She turned to meet those amber eyes again as they shone through the sparse light that filtered in from the windows. It had almost grown nearly dark and she was embarrassed to have caught herself so tuned out of the world around her by way of her internal wanderings.</p><p>"I'm sorry?"</p><p>"Do you mind if I turn on an overhead light or two?"</p><p>"I don't mind," she replied shortly. "This is your cabin as well so you are free to do as you please."</p><p>"True. Though I figured I'd ask more to prepare you."</p><p>"Courteous," she replied, wincing slightly and narrowing her eyes as they adjusted to the sudden, sharp light. Once they did, she caught sight of the title of the woman's book as it lay open facedown on the bench to hold her place. She spoke the title aloud before she could stop herself, thus revoking her own commitment to the silence. "<em>Loveless.</em>" The woman paused as she sat, hand hovering over her book in what she could discern as surprise if the slight change in her expression was anything at all.</p><p>"Yes. Do you know it?"</p><p>"I do. Fondly." She caught herself reminiscing on the times when the epic had been her solace against the world. She had even gone so far as to write an essay for her own personal musings relating it to her life, but her most cathartic memory was, "I performed an aria composed by a man named Rhapsodos that was inspired by it," she said as she stared blankly out the window. "It was the most intuitive interpretation of <em>Loveless</em> in any form that I've ever experienced." She didn't know why she suddenly chose to speak so openly to the stranger sitting across from her, but that was how her most pleasant interactions with varied cabin mates had started: subconscious abandon with a desire to connect to something.</p><p>"A woman."</p><p>"I'm sorry?"</p><p>"Rhapsodos was a woman. Rhapsodos' final composition before they died was penned by their alias as well as their real name, Aira Glass, a faunus woman who lived in the town of Kuroyuri in Northern Anima."</p><p>"Oh." She found herself at a loss for words after that statement, uncertain if her sudden muteness was due to the strange woman's familiarity with the aria's composer, or if it was due to the revelation that it was composed by a faunus woman some eighty years ago toward the end of the war.</p><p>"Not many people know of Rhapsodos' true identity," the woman said. "Some of her last composition's weren't performed much outside of Anima during her lifetime and only a select few became major exports after her death."</p><p>"That's.. sad, unfortunately," she mustered. "Some of her most moving pieces were the one's she composed towards the end of her life. There's one particular one, <em>Elegy in Blue</em>, that captured such a morose tone, all encompassing, but solemn in it's anatomy. Never trite in its emotiveness. A dignified sorrow."</p><p>"The sorrow of a war torn people," the woman whispered at the end. She looked up to the woman's amber eyes, book abandoned, now gazing out the rain streaked windows, the final grays of sunlight a faded glow soon to be engulfed by darkness. Her expression was hard, replacing its placidity of before with a look marred by deep thought. Her eyes shone even under the light. She left the room to silence, choosing to again focus her own gaze out the window. One thing about the silences that had overtaken them was that they remained uncharged, and she was grateful for that. More often than not during her upbringing, silence masked many a negative charge: awkwardness, sadness, anger, and even volatility. But each of their commitments to silence wasn't to mask a charged atmosphere, no. It was a silence that bloomed in the absence of pretense. No expectations and no pretending needed to be had here. The woman seemed just as she: no one going nowhere, or anyone going anywhere.</p><p>"Your name?"</p><p>"Hm?" She saw the woman turn to look at her out of her periphery, humming her inquiry to what she was just asked.</p><p>"Your <em>name</em>," she repeated turning to meet the woman's piercing gaze.</p><p>"Is that an offer or a question," the woman almost seemed to laugh, but not quite. She seemed to let her voice betray some of her amusement, but left uncertainty about her ways in her observer. Calculations of her own, but no pretending.</p><p>"I imagine it would do well, knowing the name of the person I am travelling with," she confessed.</p><p>"An offer then?" That same amusement.</p><p>"<em>Yes</em>, an offer," she gave finding herself more inclined towards the silent or kindred side of her cabin mate as opposed to what she surmised was a playful element to her. "My name is Weiss."</p><p>It's nice to meet you, Weiss. I'm Blake."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is a story I've been rolling around in my head for a couple of months, though some of it is still shrouded in mystery, even to me.</p><p>While I do have various major plot points, climaxes and resolutions in mind, the roadmap is still a little blurry. But wherever we are going, we're on our way.</p><p>I hope you enjoy and please look forward to more,</p><p>Ivel.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"I'm glad to see you in truer spirits, dear sister. It's always a bit disheartening to witness you after one of your episodes."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I suffered a seizure, Whitley," she dismissed, speaking slowly, yet steadily as she was determined not to air the extent of her present infirmity to him. Her body ached and her cognition was lassoed behind an opaque veil. The headache that meandered around her head now was duller than before, but was still a source of discomfort. "It has no bearings on my 'spirits', as you call it." His presence in the kitchen bowed her nerves making her almost wish that she hadn't ventured from her room for a glass of water.</em>
</p><p><em> "Yes, yes. I'm still rather glad I'm not the one who </em>suffers<em> such a genetic short straw. I couldn't imagine having to do something as important as prepare for an exit exam after such an.. ordeal."</em></p><p><em> "Is there anything in </em>particular<em> that you want?" She didn't bother looking at him from her seat. Whitley never meant well just as she never fulfilled his childish desire of getting a rise out of her.</em></p><p>
  <em> "Ah, yes. I came to let you know that Father wishes to see you in his study. I imagine he wants to make sure your faculties are intact before your final exam. It would be quite the damper on his mood if you neglected to graduate after all the effort he has put in. You are his grand assurance, after all."</em>
</p><p>She awoke in her bunk abruptly, but sound. Even from sleep she was obliged to hold herself in place with the utmost poise. She didn't even draw that jagged breath her shaken self tried to pull from the room to still her hammering heart. She detested when memories played the part of dreams as it was always like reliving some old horror. Quietly inhaling deep, controlled breaths as the train moved steadily along the tracks, she could feel the subtle yet soothing churn of the mechanical parts working beneath her to create a vibration that could often lull her to sleep whenever she gave into its charms, but at present it simply aided in stilling her current disruption of Self. She sat up slowly, swinging her legs over the side of her bunk to better position herself to gaze out the window. The storm clouds had cleared, revealing the silhouettes of mountain peaks painted majestically against the radiant light of the shattered moon that hung above this dark night. Despite the wrath of the Brothers, or one Brother rather, the fractured moon still left way for beauty in its broken wake. If the stories were true. But she didn't have much time to give to Gods. It was only moments later that she realized her cabin mate, 'Blake' she learned, was still as she was before she went to sleep. After their brief talk of <em>Loveless</em>, they had spoken but a few more words to each other, falling into silence again before she herself decided to sleep for the night. Perched listlessly in her seat, her amber eyes were trained out the window and Blake's face was marred again by deep thought, though something was decidedly different about her face, subtle as the difference was. If the moonlight hit her just right she looked almost.. sad, or angered in a way that broke her heart. And her eyes were hardened amber as though they held a specimen that had long since passed.</p><p>"There was.. a development while you were asleep," Blake spoke suddenly, startling her a bit, the tone of her voice almost unnaturally even. "The Captain announced that the train's route would be changing."</p><p>"Changing in what way?"</p><p>"After our stop in Hollis in a few hours, we will be switching tracks and heading through Mayuri instead of the city of Roanoke. The Transcontinental will provide a complementary Right of Way to anyone who has been affected," Blake imparted.</p><p>"Did the Captain say why the train is changing its route?" She wondered what could have caused such a devastating change. Perhaps the storm had downed some trees along the tracks? No, the storm had come from the South. They were heading East before they headed South toward Vale so that couldn't be the case.</p><p>"He didn't," the woman simply stated, but something about her entire demeanor conveyed that she already knew the reason why.</p><p>Curious, she pulled her scroll from her purse and typed out a quick search to find anything pertaining to their situation. What she found not only made her pale in the moonlight, but seethe in bitter resentment and terror. "The White Fang," she whispered to herself.</p><p>"The White Fang." Her cabin mate's words were a statement, not a question. "They attacked an SDC shipment that was bound East. The tracks suffered extensive damage."</p><p>"I read," she bit, her tone betraying the presence of unpleasant emotions inside of her.</p><p>"It's unfortunate, but it can't be helped."</p><p>She remained silent, refining herself to thwart a response in automatic offense toward a specter for her hatred. Any other instance in her life, her automatic response to such a development would have been more tempered, fueled by less intense emotions. But this instance, <em>this</em> instance most assuredly invited a call from her father beckoning her back to Atlas where he could sequester his <em>guarantee. </em>And so she committed herself to silence. She didn't trust herself enough to speak.She had come so far, and yet, she didn't feel far enough away to ultimately be able to resist her father's demands.</p><p>"You're upset." She looked to find those hard, amber eyes honed in on her, and if she hadn't learned not to long ago, she might have flinched from their sudden focus on her. The woman's observant nature had again made her wary. Her eyes alone were almost oracular, though revealing her to herself, or rather revealing her own transparency in the way she seemed only able.</p><p>"I find myself inconvenienced," she settled.</p><p>"Mildly, one could argue."</p><p>"Your adjectival usage is in the eye of the beholder," she said defensively.</p><p>"Maybe so," Blake settled before she returned her gaze out the window. The woman seemed to try her just so with her audacious nature, leaving the conversation be as nonchalantly as she helped carry it, yet moving it in such a way as to try and understand something.</p><p>"Speak plainly if you wish to know something." Another offer. She would understand this seeming attempt at understanding. She would assuage this curiosity.</p><p>"You weren't upset until you found out the White Fang was responsible for the change in route. Why?" Forward. She could comply with forward, not this dance she was unsure if she was sharing in.</p><p>"My," she paused. How would she phrase her situation in a way that wouldn't allude to who she was?</p><p><em>"Your concern is unfounded, Didier. The White Fang has yet to truly threaten Schnee Dust. It has yet to see a deficit because of this frivolous war they're waging and certainly lack the ability to do so. The SDC has done nothing but thrive since its inception, an objective fact you yourself could falsify. Even still, such thriving will continue long after we're corporeal once my daughter comes to oversee the SDC's expanding legacy. She is </em>my<em> heiress after all."</em></p><p>"My.. family is overprotective of me," she started, turning her focus out the window. "I'm an.. only child. My present disposition stems from the call I know I will get once they hear of this. I'm afraid they'll have me end my travels and return home."</p><p>"You could continue your travels though," Blake offered. "You seem capable of deciding that for yourself."</p><p>"It's not so simple." She met a face that showed confusion, though not grandly so. A mystification that sought clarity in an almost academic way.</p><p>"Would you not want to go home? Even to ease their minds?" Questions. Forward questions toward understanding</p><p>"I'd.. rather continue my travels," she said as she broke gaze. There was nothing in her heart that wanted to return to Atlas. Not even her sister and that alone had her hating the fact that Winter had emancipated herself yet still remained in Atlas. She wasn't afforded the same luxury since her sister had managed such a feat in her great severance. She had to tear herself away from Atlas, and it was as painful and difficult as if she had been sewn in its seams. A living doll needled into something larger as an organ of further insurance. "Do you think a person can defy an inevitability?"</p><p>"Like death?" Blake's inquiry bled its genuine nature as much as her wholly staunched mannerisms allowed. Subtle, almost elegant. Keen.</p><p>"Yes, and no," she confessed. "If you were the decision, a person's guarantee, do you think you could defy yourself?"</p><p>"I wouldn't know how to answer that, really," she said, "but it was a hard lesson to learn that I wasn't going to be the pillar that someone needed to stand on top of." That statement, devoid of an answer as the speaker claimed it to be, dangled like a line to catharsis. Hearing that fluttered the notion of a <em>chance</em> in her mind. And it occurred to her then that she had been running with no hope or belief in the chance she was taking, fleeing aimlessly until the wind of change that had unfurled her sails buckled into the undertow that would drag her back. She didn't believe in herself. But who was she if she wasn't her father's guarantee? Who was she outside of her father's defining gavel and how could a stranger lay her bare before herself, reveal that she wasn't in, but was the sheep's clothing?</p><p>She was being worn by her father and his expectations.</p><p>And she wasn't anyone going anywhere.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Weiss suffers from Grand Mal seizures. This is something I wanted to embed in her character, not as a plot point, but as a fact of her life. She will suffer seizures in the story, but the seizures themselves are not the plot point. Why she has them is. She isn't ill, so to say. It's just that someone wishes her harm. I'll leave you with that.</p><p>Chapters will also get longer as I go. These initial ones are moments that Blake and Weiss are sharing and I wanted to punctuate their brevity in the length while also including content that speaks to the poignancy of these initial moments.</p><p>Hope you enjoy and please look forward to more, </p><p>Ivel</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>"We are wealthy, Father, not celebrities. I can't imagine myself in harm's way." The call came shortly after day broke. She was a cool collection made manifest as she talked with her father, determined to be a mirror he couldn't peer through. He had an ability to spy things despite his lack of physical presence, something that she could never employ. Something that she could almost say wasn't inherently </em>Schnee<em> this current generation, but her sister possessed such a trait, albeit without being so miasmatic.</em></p><p><em> "Our particular place on the socio-economic ladder invites a certain.. </em>celebrity<em> unto itslef, but your imaginations are neither here nor there, Weiss." An insult she was meant to accept. "Your travels are ended. You are to wrap up any affairs you have and return to Atlas."</em></p><p>
  <em> "Father I acknowledge your concern, but I don't see why the White Fang should disrupt my travels."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Like I've said before my dear, there is only so much of Remnant to see. I think you've seen plenty. Your position at the SDC has been secured and your role will be waiting for you once you return home. In addition to that, you have been accepted into Atlas Academy's doctoral program. There's still time before you will resume your studies, assuredly enough for you to acclimate to your position at Schnee Dust."</em>
</p><p><em> "I'm not yet ready to return to Atlas, Father." Her best attempt at open defiance against his rule of law. She had just graduated six months ago. She did not want her wings to be clipped after only just discovering she had them. They were weak and untrained after a life so strictly regimented, yet they carried her this far. She wanted to go further. She</em> needed<em> to go further.</em></p><p>
  <em> "Weiss, there comes a time in life when one's childish desires must be set aside, for responsibility and duty." He always liked to infantilize his children to assert his dominion over them until they buckled in compliance. "Returning to Atlas is not a suggestion, my dear. This.. combativeness goes against your character, Weiss. Tell me," the brief silence was conducted like a grand pause, "when did you intend on returning home before I gave you this call?" Her blood ran cold in theory. Nothing changed with her physically, save for the beating madness in her chest and the chill that would have made her shiver if she hadn't leaned not to long ago. But it was all for reason. She remained silent, and it was answer enough. There was no question of whether or not her father was in the know. She was raised in his operant chamber. He gave her all her tells. "I see," he laughed, grand champion in this match. "There have been little curiosities in your finances." Smug. "All of your purchases show as Geppetto on your bank and credit statements. Mildly curious, indeed. Even as curious have been your expenses, somewhat bloated for travel transactions, but you've always had exquisite taste." His words pressed into her like a hot iron, tantalizing and unbearable. "Though, if taste isn't at play here, how much Lien is that in excess? One hundred thousand at best, if I cared to chance at a guess." She was silent still. "Say it, my dear. You were never good at machinations. Not like your sister."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I'm not coming home."</em>
</p><p>The sun was setting beautifully. The sky gradated in an almost unnatural way, orange to dark purple from the horizon up, the clouds seemingly airbrushed around the waning star and over the expanse, slowly revealing smaller stars in the sky that would shine brilliantly for a brief moment before the broken moon made their shine diminutive. Nature found a way to turn unnatural into natural. It was just its way. Its beauty. A beauty she could never understand outside of the scientific explanation that chained her perception and trivialized such beauty and made it mundane. A function. Every sunset was ruined for her forever because she could no longer believe in the miraculous. A sunset could never be magical for her and a small particle of childlike whimsy in her mourned a loss she never knew she suffered until she looked in the mirror and saw a more or less empirical being. Her awe at the sight, subdued as it was at present, was a grand pretending, imagined even. A certain stillness fell suddenly over the cabin, like a concentration or a macro focus, and it was honed in on her. "I'd say we are at the point where you can address me casually without leering at me over the top of your book. Wouldn't you?" She turned to her cabin mate with a lazy, non-committal look to find those amber eyes reflecting something back at her. She turned her gaze back to the sunset. Those eyes brought her discomfort when they wanted to know something.</p><p>"I would," Blake said lowering her book. "'Leer' is an.. interesting word to use."</p><p>"Is there something you wish to say?"</p><p>"Perhaps. But despite the pleasant conversations we've had, you're not much more approachable than you were before we had them."</p><p>"I am suspect of your definition of 'pleasant'."</p><p>"Let's say 'meaningful' then," Blake offered.</p><p>"I could question what is meaningful to you as well," she replied in a way that felt like slapping a hand away. This 'Blake' seemed to be seeking proximity through her words, a proximity she didn't want.</p><p>"If you want," Blake all but sighed as she returned to her book. "You seemed troubled and I thought I'd offer more 'pleasantries'."</p><p>"You're audaciously observant," she jabbed, turning to meet those amber eyes only to find them sweeping over the pages of her book in a typewriter like fashion.</p><p>"Observation is audacious then?"</p><p>"Not by design, but your penchant for voicing your observations <em>is</em>."</p><p>"So you are troubled?" Blake questioned her as she continued to mechanically survey the landscape of her book's pages. She paused in her retort, realizing suddenly that she didn't have one to put forth.</p><p>"<em>My troubles are steep, the descent from precipice overhanging," </em>she began, reciting the short poem from memory, returning to the sunset, but not truly looking upon it. It was the only answer she could give, an answer that could say more than any phrase she'd be able to formulate.</p><p>"<em>And they are daunting like the incline to the cliff. </em></p><p>
  <em>O' Brother mine, I cannot take the plunge and I cannot risk the climb. The valley—"</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "—I cannot traverse and the sky will have me pierced by the fractures of the moon.</em>
</p><p><em>So I will sleep 'til eventide then find 'way homeward soon.</em>" Blake paused after finishing the poem in her stead."<em>Homeward</em> by the Atlesian draftee Theopolis Shay, published in his posthumous collection<em> Formulae and Other Poems </em>after the war." Blake put her book face down in her lap and joined in gazing at the sunset. "It is said that he wrote it in lieu of a letter to his brother during the war after he fled the military. Unable to reconcile the war atrocities he took part in and in fear of the repercussions of desertion, he was never able to bring himself to return home and instead led a life of itinérance in the East before dying from a pox in his early thirties."</p><p>They rode in silence for a moment that was impervious to an estimation of time. How bare she was, how bare she was made, done so to herself by her own tongue and by the tongue of the other sitting across from her. Silence was her defining characteristic of the day and she was not one to be silent, especially when the perceived sleight of being openly known was cast upon her. Deflection was her armor. "You are spitefully well versed in literature and its history."</p><p>"Aside from my general enjoyment of it, I also teach a Literature class back home," Blake confessed as she made to return to her book, but her eyes didn't drift mechanically over the pages this time. She saw those amber eyes move barely back and forth over a fixed position as thought trying to make sense of something that was beyond those pages, perhaps even within the makeup of the paper. Blake sighed and closed her eyes, relinquishing her book back to her lap before opening them and fixing them steadfastly onto her. "You're.. not what I expected."</p><p>"Do you always affix expectations to strangers, or am I a special case?" Her question was even toned, but contained a subtle bite, a sting of warning from an organism on alert when something aimed to make it prey. Her eyes were alight with a refined fury. She would not be toyed with.</p><p>"No. At least not in the way you're assuming."</p><p>"And what way would that be?"</p><p>"The way that expects you to be how or what you don't want," Blake leveled, and she could see a look in those amber eyes, not akin to, but no so unlike pity, that triggered a sympathetic response in her against this psychological intrusion.</p><p>"You're quite brazen, presuming to know me or my circumstance. I advise you to 'leave the troubled <em>be</em>'." Blake laughed at that, a brief thing, but a laugh nonetheless, and her mirth took her utterly aback out of her fighting stance to reassess this game she was entangled in.</p><p>"You're being difficult, yet quoting poetry like little invitations," Blake said shaking her head with the smallest of smiles on her lips that she could almost claim she imagined it.</p><p>"We are done talking." She turned away from those eyes, amber amused and with a hammer pulled back to fire a projectile that would tear her wide open. She had come too far to continue to play war games in her social interactions: a lie she told herself to distinguish herself from the product of pure nurture that she was. The sun would set completely and miles would be behind them, the silence between them elongating that stretch of track ten fold in her mind. She decided that she could nearly hate this woman for reasons she had yet to truly decipher. It stemmed from the mischievous familiarity the woman approached her with in tandem with the disregard she felt the woman seemingly had for her despite how she would press her with tiny pinpricks. She wondered what the woman was playing at, finding herself maligned and in turmoil when she doubted that a game was even being played, inviting uncertainty into her fury.</p><p>"<em>Brothers, leave the troubled be, lest they taste defiance.</em></p><p>
  <em>A prayer answered here begets none answered there, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>mocking the chrysalis of joy inside. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>War rages long, and famine plagues them deep, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>but verily there are moments nigh </em>
</p><p>
  <em>that fill their cups and reminds poor men </em>
</p><p>
  <em>of still tender butterflies." </em>
</p><p>Blake's recital didn't seem meant for anyone, but she was the audience nonetheless. The content in all its brevity, swollen and filling more than it should have been able, gave her pause from her tumultuous inner workings to ruminate on the piece that was spoken aloud and why she cared to speak it. "I want to apologize. It wasn't my intention to antagonize you."</p><p>"Words are a curious distortion," she offered, still set cautiously on edge "autonomous in a way, because the speaker's intentions are not carried with them by default. <em>Nor</em> is their sincerity."</p><p>"You're not wrong." Blake paused. "Know that I sent it with mine."</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"My sincerity," Blake said. Her voice carried an emotiveness unlike any phrase she had uttered before. Mostly only her face could be read and only barely so at that. It was largely her eyes that told the most genuine tales, but the language in that amber was either incredibly foreign or long dead. She couldn't communicate with those.</p><p>"We have spoken upwards of a thousand words between ourselves and that is the first time I've witnessed emotional content within them," she voiced. "At least a content that I could decipher." Blake hummed quietly in response, reverting back to her commitment to silence. She was left hollow in the wake of Blake's silence, a misplaced feeling she could loosely describe as despondence filling the space now vacant within her, strange yet not wholly unfamiliar. She often felt it at home, those rare moments when she tried to connect to something that wasn't there. And so she reached. "That poem.. an untitled thing by Georges Rhodes. I imagine there is something rather.. enlightening about it you could tell me that I'm unaware of." Blake hummed a response, but it didn't convey whether or not she accepted this 'little invitation' of hers. And then she spoke.</p><p>"That poem did have a title once," Blake started slowly seemingly weighing her words with a meticulousness that conveyed that she was taking great care with them, "around two hundred years ago: <em>Blaspheme, A Rhapsody. </em>Sometime in his late twenties, when religion was largely prevalent across Remnant, he denounced the Gods. He lost his faith after war, famine, and sickness ravaged his homeland in Vacuo and took his family, stating that the Gods didn't answer prayers and that mankind was capable of answering its own prayers and prevailing through any manner of hardship. Not only that, but that hardship and joy were cyclical and inescapable constants in life. He left his home sometime after that and went on a pilgrimage of sorts, reciting his poetry that the pious saw as maddened ravings of some indigent. As a result, he was executed by the church as he attempted to flee the capital for reasons that are still ultimately lost to history." Her discourse was indeed information rich, as she predicted, and the simple imparting of factual information soothed her in a way that she needed. It was something of truth, something concrete to cling to that had no threat of being disputed.</p><p>"Free worship is something we have today that people of the past didn't have the luxury of observing, if one so chooses to partake, along with the lack of a need for separation of church and state. There's no need for a separation if it has ceased trying to exert itself in extra-religious affairs. Perhaps history gave us the reason over time," she offered, "a direct result of trying to wash it from the annals of time."</p><p>"What is that?" Blake inquired genuinely, the barest tinge of such.</p><p>"That he was right."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hope you enjoy and please look forward to more,</p><p>Ivel</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Every morning after she woke she would take a singular tablet and wash it away with a singular drink of water. It was the only thing that remained in her life of necessity, a static anchor in a strange way as she went hither and thither back and forth along the rails of the Transcontinental. It was the only thing that remained the same amongst all of the uncertainties that threaded her life together at present, a tangle she couldn't untwine to get to the core that was purpose, a vague reasoning, or control. But it was late in the morning now, hours past the routine caring of herself, and the unknown was all that was left in her day. And she couldn't control that. She stared down at the message she had received hours ago in the wake of a purposefully missed call, a loaded thing she couldn't find within herself to interpret outside of alarming:</p><p>'<em>Return my call as soon as you are able. Mother phoned. She said she is worried about you.'</em></p><p>
  <em> "Are you alright, dearest?" Her mother's hands grazed gently, hesitantly over her forehead then through her bangs before retreating, a strained accompaniment to the words uttered that hummed with the smell of wine. The entire encounter elicited a nausea in her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I'm fine," she dismissed, brushing her mother's endeavor away and increasing the distance between them with a stiff and dismissive body language. "I should know better than to drink as much as I did. There's no need to coddle me in the wake of my bad decisions."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "You make better decisions than I have," her mother said. "It's why I care for you, Weiss." Her mother reached toward her again, and she allowed the passage, leaning into the touch more than she would normally allow herself. She had a weakness for her mother's inebriated affections, sporadic and arguably rare in contrast to her usually inebriated absence, but it was in these rare moments with her that she felt she could allow herself to be her mother's child again. "Klein said it wasn't bad this time. I'm glad.. Are you sure you don't want to rest more?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I'm sure I would be in hospital if I needed more than the rest I've gotten."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I suppose you are right," her mother said, withdrawing her hand and returning it to her lap. "I hate to see you ill. Your.. father is ill equipped for it as well."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I'm sure," she bit. Her mother had a fatal habit of being the man's biggest apologist despite how the same man had driven her so blindingly to the bottle.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "He just wants to see you succeed."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Him, that is."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "I.. want you to light up your own sky," her mother whispered, pausing to take a delicate yet copious drink from her glass before she continued. "You're a brightest star. Like Winter.. That's your light you shine, all your own, wherever you go, Weiss. Do you understand?" She turned to her mother, an exhaustion washing over her, and looked deeply into her eyes, searching that placated soul for the intention behind those words. What her mother said to her took her aback once she found the truth in those cavernous eyes. A sadness billowed out, the lines on Willow Schnee's face were more pronounced and she noticed her mother looked tired and torn, and old. So unbearably sad. "Only I truly belong here, Weiss. With him. You will make better decisions than I have, understand?"</em>
</p><p>"Have you ever been?"</p><p>"Hm?" Her attention was called from her consternations to the woman across from her. They were on more neutral of terms now, Blake seemingly retreating from her vague prying to hopefully offer her a more pleasant companionship during this last day of their time together. "I'm sorry, my mind was preoccupied. What did you ask me?"</p><p>"Have you ever been to Vale?" Blake repeated.</p><p>"I haven't," she confessed. Blake raised an eyebrow at that, just barely almost as though she was withholding the expression that was already so slight.</p><p>"In that case, this sight will be a treat," Blake started as she stood. "We're still an hour or so away, but we'll be able to see the city as we come over the mountain. Here, " Blake gestured for her to join her at the window, "you don't want to miss it."</p><p>Standing from her seat, she walked over to the window and stood next to the woman, their proximity initially close as their shoulders barely touched before she pulled away an inch for comfort. What she saw as the trees broke to give way to the sky and valleys stole her breath. The sight elicited an awe within her that was as close an approximation to a feeling she couldn't truly remember in earnest. "It's.. that's Vale?"</p><p>"That's Vale," Blake confirmed.</p><p>Even from such a great distance, the telling expanse and verticality of the city was stunning. Flanked by a forest of green an a forest of red, buildings towered above buildings and grew smaller as they city spread outward. She could just barely make out the tiers of the city through which the populous surely bustled, walking and riding across the sky bridges. She imagined the smaller buildings were where people lived their lives, raised happy families, and spent time with friends. Puffs of steam rose in the sky over it and dissipated quickly, an affront her father would say given that Vale used a mixture of "archaic" advancements that utilized steam power and aero electricity in tandem with dust to provide efficient power to the city with a fraction of the pollution Atlas had come to embrace.</p><p>"It's a bit daunting, even from here," she said on a whim. "No so unlike Atlas, but unfamiliar."</p><p>"Unfamiliar isn't necessarily a bad thing," Blake responded. The train was beginning its descent over the mountain, burying the view of Vale behind densely packed trees. Blake turned to sit again, leaving her at the window staring at nothing in particular.</p><p>"It isn't necessarily a good thing, when everything tends to be unfamiliar," she spoke softly, turning her head slightly to glance in Blake's direction from her periphery. "It wasn't until I began travelling months ago that I left Atlas for the first time."</p><p>"Really?" Blake's voice had an edge of disbelief and curiosity.</p><p>"I can hear more questions in your throat," she called Blake out. "Please spare me of the aggravatingly cryptic inquiries and speak forward and plain."</p><p>"Your travels seem important to you," Blake spoke, and she almost dared to think she could hear a soft smile in her words. She didn't chance looking at her, a best bet to avoid those prying amber eyes that were surely scanning her. "It's intriguing why you've only began them a short while ago."</p><p>"Only if you don't understand how leaving can be harder than staying."</p><p>"So you're going away as opposed to going towards?"</p><p>"That is none of your concern," she dismissed.</p><p>"I don't suppose it is," Blake said. "That going is familiar, though." Silence spread over them, but it was different this time. There was a charge in the air, perhaps a charge within her that strangely made her want to open up to this stranger who had a penchant for working out the heart and mind of another. Her uncharacteristic desire filled her with such an overwhelming loneliness that was all too familiar. And just as she had always done, she stamped it utterly down with anything it was marrying itself to.</p><p>"And where are you going?" she asked quietly, finally retaking her own seat and meeting Blake's eyes with a gloss of uncertainty. It seemed they were to have a proper conversation.</p><p>"Home," Blake answered simply, a warmth flaring in her eyes and the slightest of smiles drawing on her features before she broke gaze to the passing scenery. She seemed fond of the blur of trees that rushed past as the train moved along.</p><p>She hummed a noncommittal response to that. Home. The idea sparked nothing fond in her. She couldn't imagine a warmth starting in her at the thought of her <em>home</em>, a place that was cold and devoid anything that could stir up longing. But Blake seemed so fond of hers, and it made her thoughts of home seem wrong. As though a home isn't what she had, never did even. She pulled her scroll out and stared down at the message she still hadn't considered responding to, her brow knitting together more each time she reread it. Yes, home was complicated where it could have been simple, in another life, or a myth all the while she believed it to be truth. But none of that mattered now, did it? It was a worthless origin, she told herself. It was mostly the truth, but there was the smallest bit of a lie in there. She stood, resolving herself to end this. "I'll return shortly," she imparted off handedly, exiting to the hall before either of the cabin's occupants could elaborate through their wonders as to why.</p><p>She made her way to the back of the train car and stepped through a door to a small area outside where passengers could have their smoke. Thinking less and less about her actions and simply acting on her will towards resolving this.. <em>feeling,</em> she pressed her finger to the call button and awaited the connection to her sister's line, once, twice, a third time, then—</p><p>
  <em>"Hello, Weiss."</em>
</p><p>"Winter. You wanted me to return your call?"</p><p>
  <em>"I did. I wasn't sure you would, but I appreciate you doing so."</em>
</p><p>"It's nothing," she dismissed. "You can go ahead and ask me."</p><p>
  <em>"Why is Mother expressing her concern for you, to me? Has something happened?"</em>
</p><p>"Not in so many words. You are aware that I am travelling?"</p><p>
  <em>"I am. Which is how I came to find myself concerned when Mother called me."</em>
</p><p>"She isn't really the one to keep in touch, is she?"</p><p>
  <em>"No, she isn't, Weiss, which is why I want you to assuage my own concerns now and stop dancing around the question."</em>
</p><p>"I'll answer a different one, Winter," her tone morphed. Whatever she was feeling changed in spite of her, and aggravation grew unjustly toward her sister. "I've actually been enjoying my time more than I thought I would, but still much less than I would like. And I've discovered that I enjoy travelling by train. A lot actually. I honestly think I've spent more of these past six months in motion than I have walking on solid ground. I'd tell you how I've been as well, but you didn't ask that question."</p><p><em>"Weiss.. I'm sorry," </em>Winter sighed, but her tone gave away that she was taking the high ground on this one.<em> "It has been a while since we last spoke. How have you been?"</em></p><p>"Don't let Mother worry you, Winter," she dismissed bitterly. She sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted of her bitterness. Winter did nothing to cause her to be coarse with her, and her sister didn't deserve for her perplexing frustrations to be taken out on her. She was thankful that her sister was more patient with her than most. "I'm fine. Things have been rather uneventful and I don't foresee that changing any time soon."</p><p><em>"Weiss, for Mother to call me and express her concern for you alarms me," </em>Winter said with great caring in her voice.<em> "You know how she is. For her to reach is unlike her, and why she did concerns me most. You are well, aren't you?"</em></p><p>"I am, Winter," she mostly lied, though it wasn't devoid of some truth. "I'm.. I'll be in Vale within the hour, and I think I'll be there for a while."</p><p>
  <em>"Weiss.. are you alright?"</em>
</p><p>She thought long and hard about what her sister asked her.</p><p><em>She braced herself against the bookshelf, clutching at the left of her face and shaking with an anger that always boiled up to drown out her terror in its wake. She wouldn't go so far as to say she deserved it, but she certainly knew that she was charging towards a </em>line<em> that she fully intended to race over. She expected something, knowing she was going to incur his ire, but not necessarily this.</em></p><p><em> Her father hadn't struck her in years. He had pulled back from corporal punishment shortly before she had legally become an adult. Mostly. There had been but two times when he regressed past that point when she was being 'disobedient' and 'incorrigible' in his eyes, but it was truly after that second time that the consequences of his actions gave him pause by way of the singular droplet of blood she couldn't keep stubbornly dammed in her flooding mouth. After that, he was resolved to dressing down her self-esteem without remorse, made her feel </em>shame <em>and worthlessness.</em></p><p><em> "You will NOT," the sudden spike in dynamic made her jump in her skin before her father's voice dipped back low as if it had never occurred, " fix your tongue to speak to me like that </em>ever," <em>he uttered the word in such a way as if her actions were a universal anomaly that </em>could<em> never happen again, looked at her like she was touched and utterly unintelligent. Like she </em>dared<em>, "again. You are only as you are because I made you so—"</em></p><p>
  <em> "I am not your toy!" she yelled, and as her father descended on her all too calmly and unconcerned with a look of boredom on his sharp and ordered features, she regretted her outburst.</em>
</p><p><em> "Listen, Weiss," he said matter-of-factly, like he was speaking to a business associate that was objectively beneath him. "My dedication to this family, to the Schnee Dust Company, has been an endeavor that I've undertaken with great pride, but it hasn't been without sacrifice." He crossed in front of her, an unwavering and infallible tower or sorts, to sit in the chair across from her. "You're not a child, and you </em>will<em> make sacrifices as I have. Your sacrifices will honor my own and bolster what I have built for us. For family and for duty you will do this." His voice was even, commanding of respect still, and calm. It was a voice of normalcy, the voice of him being in control.</em></p><p>
  <em> "I want something for myself before I hand my life away!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Dear, as I told you earlier, there is only so much of Remnant to see," he laughed, standing again and throwing an arm out to gesture around them before he placed the other into the pocket of his suit jacket to retrieve a cigarette. "What could you possibly come to see that would help you here?" he asked before lighting it and taking a draw, hissing between his teeth as he stowed it away deeper in his lungs before releasing it. "Now is not the time to idle, my dear. You have momentum. For what reason would you want to squander that? A self-serving pilgrimage, writing poems like some beatnik in squalid cafés just to say that you did? I hope you're not fancying yourself as an artist in the back of your mind." He took another draw from his cigarette before putting the half gone thing out in the crystal ashtray that sat on the corner of his desk. "I'm not without compassion, Weiss, but you should take the opportunity to grow up and rise above these childish whims. And anything to the contrary will do you no good." He reached for another cigarette. "See yourself out, dear."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> She returned to her room, filled with a corrosive rage that had her blindingly diving for a bottle of forty year old Vacuoan red wine once she was behind closed door, a draught she was quite fond of. She drank recklessly, lowering her seizure threshold significantly in retrospect by the time she was halfway through the Mistralian white. She imagined her mother somewhere in the house drinking regally with just as much abandoned. A more refined version of herself in a few years if she excelled in it like she did in other things. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She awoke somewhat, confused on the floor and her cognition muddled to the visage of a terribly worried Klein. She tried to rise, needing to reposition herself as she felt sick churning in her stomach, but he wouldn't let her. Her forehead beaded slightly with sweat.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "You must lie still," he said with a edge of panic in his voice. "I'll need to get you to the hospital."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lying still and hospital were the only things she was able to register. "No," she croaked, still trying to at least turn on her side.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "They were terribly concerning this time," was all she could cling to of his words. They, meaning multiple.</em>
</p><p><em> "</em>No," <em>she managed more harshly to convey her objection of going to the hospital.</em></p><p>
  <em> "Miss.."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> "Please, Klein," she nearly whined, nearly begged, still unable to right herself to any extent. "My bed.."</em>
</p><p>
  <em> The remainder of the night passed as a blur, and even some of the events prior to her seizures escaped her fully until the following day. Klein stayed at her bedside the entire night, leaving only to perform some nightly duties for the rest of the household and to bring her glasses of water. The man cared for her deeply, was truly her father in all rights but legally. He helped her to her bed, removed her cardigan so that she would be more comfortable before he drew the covers over her, and had taken care of the mess she made when she retched over the side of her bed. This was not a night she wanted to remember, but did if only for the care he showed her.</em>
</p><p><em> Strangely the next day she had an encounter with her mother, drunk as she sat beside her on the piano bench in the music room, running her fingers hesitantly through her bangs. Even more strange was that her father called her into his study after, his mannerisms holding no recollection of the evening before, and </em>granted<em> her request to travel. She remained in line the rest of the week, perfectly obedient and submissive all while plotting her exodus from the home she had never strayed from.</em></p><p><em> "Weiss." </em>Winter startled her from the memory, her voice having grown an audibly more concerned tone undoubtedly as a response to her pause. "<em>Are you alright?" </em>her sister asked again.</p><p>"I'm fine," she mostly lied again. "I am," she said once more so that she herself could even believe it.</p><p><em>"Do take care of yourself. Please?" </em>Winter asked of her, a skepticism in her tone of voice, but she knew Winter was retreating this time, a courtesy she couldn't expect again due to how much her sister cared for her.</p><p>"I will, Winter. I'll keep in touch."</p><p>The call ended, and she slowly began to weave her way back to her cabin, her mind reeling from the sudden front she had to put on. She was sitting in her seat adjacent to the window before she knew it, her scroll clutched in her hands as she was completely lost in the wanderings of her mind. She was far calmer than she imagined she would be, given the trip into her memories of the not so distant past and the conversation with her sister that she wasn't expecting to have. But there was a wrongness to her calm. She felt as though she should be bursting with emotions if only she could—</p><p>"Are you alright?"</p><p>She had forgotten about Blake's presence. She bypassed looking at the woman across from her in favor of staring out the window. She supposed she hadn't schooled her body language enough despite the perfect control and ease that was reflected back to her in that window.</p><p>"I am," she replied evenly as she caught moreflashes of her own reflection on the window in the dark blurs that shot by.</p><p>"I could believe you if I wasn't looking at you," Blake said.</p><p>"Right," she said, shaking her head and smiling, still refusing to look anywhere near Blake's way. That feeling of desirewas beginning to well up in her again. Now was not the time for it, and she began to stamp it out of her chest again before it gave her trouble.</p><p>"Are you alright?" Blake asked again, and she found herself hating that question for how often in had been repeated in the past ten minutes.</p><p>"<em>No," </em>she admitted forcefully, and to her own surprise. "And it is—"</p><p>"—none of my concern," Blake finished with a sigh.</p><p>"Why do you do that?" she questioned, snapping her head to Blake and finally looking on the woman who just stared back at her with a look she was only able to pin as pity in her rebellion. She projected that pity onto the woman, and so much more. "Why are you unable to respect a person's boundaries?" Her voice was raised slightly and she could see Blake was visibly surprised by her outburst.</p><p>"I was prepared to," the woman said calmly, her eyebrows low and a seriousness on her face that she had never shown before. "If you will still let me."</p><p>"If <em>I </em>will let you," she laughed in disbelief. "What are you playing at here, with this?" she questioned incredulously with a gesture of her hand. "Whatever game this is, I <em>tire</em> of it," she spat. Her seams were bristling and she would lash out if she didn't gain back her control over herself, stop letting this cacophony of emotions gain purchase.</p><p>"I'm not playing a game, or I'm not intending to if that is how you've seen our interactions. I can tell something is troubling you, truly, and I was only tryingto offer—"</p><p>"Pleasantries?" she cut her off.</p><p>"An ear that will listen, without judgement," Blake corrected. "Comfort, perhaps," she finished before turning to the window, her exit from the conversation pronounced in a most silent, yet deafening way.</p><p>She laughed again and shook her head. "I don't know if I'm growing fond of you, or if I'm growing to <em>hate</em> you." It was then that she noticed Blake's face had grown rather.. sad, or angered, or both if she could hazard a description for the woman's strange change in expression as she stared out the window. All of her frustrations with her world wilted at the sight and she was left with that raw, unadulterated feeling of desire to turn to this woman that agitated that abject loneliness in her whenever she thought to open up to her on a whim. "I'm sorry."</p><p>A long moment passed before Blake finally spoke. "Let's just finish our ride in silence." Her voice was all too unconcerned, and that caused a strange pang in her chest. The silence was charged with despondence and a settling. It reminded her of 'home'.</p><p>"It frustrates me more than I can explain, that you can peer into me, through me as effortlessly as you do," she said, reaching, her gaze down and locked onto the scroll still clutched in her hands. "It's," she swallowed. "I don't like the feeling, being known by a <em>stranger</em> of all people." She gripped her phone tighter as Blake kept to her silence, unmoving an unrelenting while she opened herself up to what she didn't know. "You do it without a care, just pry and <em>pry."</em> Blake's prolonged silence through her confessions started to aggravate her again. She couldn't take the lack of response. "Say <em>something!" </em>she demanded, looking up to the woman across from her.</p><p>Blake finally turned from the window to her, her amber eyes impassioned and alight. A frustration of her own marred her features, but she was still ever reserved with her expressions. "I only know as much about you as I've known of myself. In part," she said slowly. "My curiosity got the better of me, unusual I'll admit as I didn't care to engage with you as much as I did at first. I'm sorry that I bothered you on such a front."</p><p>"That's not an apology I <em>want."</em></p><p>"Then what do you want from me?" Blake asked, a subdued frustration in her even voice that struck her as aimless, as though it could have been directed upon herself o<em>r </em>at her, or neither of them at all. "Give me the courtesy of speaking plain like you asked of me."</p><p>"I want you to <em>mean </em>it." She was exasperated, at a loss and fed up with this entanglement they were engaged in.</p><p>"My <em>apology?" </em>Blake said, not understanding. "I—"</p><p>"Your <em>concern</em>! I don't want you to <em>ask</em> me if you're not going to care!" Silence enveloped them, and she felt the angry red flush drain from her face, suddenly aware of what she had been on about, control lost as she took in Blake's honest expression. It was utterly shocked.</p><p>Another moment passed. She saw Blake force a hard swallow as her features relaxed into their more natural and placid state. Her eyes lowered briefly, a flash of uncertainty, before they lifted again to meet her, amber eyes soft and gentle, yet firm. Resolute somehow. "Weiss," she started, honesty in her eyes and voice. "Tell me what's wrong?"</p><p>A simple request, one she rarely had leveled to her by Klein a handful of times in Altas when even <em>she</em> didn't know she needed that she needed to talk about something. But Klein knew her, truly knew her, whereas this woman did not. And she fought her for a bitter pill that she needed to swallow, a panacea that would last her a while. Or rather, a placebo that would deaden the symptom yet do nothing about the disease. She laughed. "Not even my brother can elicit such a rise out of me," she said before turning back to the window. The tree line was thinning, and through the gaps she could make out the start of a grand city, see the steam rising so close above the trees.</p><p>"Not an only child?" Blake asked.</p><p>"I'd forgotten I told that lie," she answered, having come mostly down for what she could only call a tantrum. She laughed again, a sleight against herself as she remembered all the times her father had insisted she grow up. "Seems silly now, all of it" she confessed. "I would ask you if you wanted to hear a story with this rare showing of honesty, but," she gestured out the window, "it seems we don't necessarily have <em>time</em>."</p><p>"My offer for a listening ear still stands," Blake said.</p><p>"An offer then, yes Blake?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"Look at the full circle we've travelled."</p><p>"I had a heavy hand in making it miserable for the both of us," Blake said, though something seemed left out. Then sincerely, "I'm sorry."</p><p>"I'm sorry, too." And she meant it. "I don't hate you," she hesitated, doubling back to her words from earlier. "It's probably more of the former.."</p><p>"In another setting, as though we could befriend each other," Blake affirmed as though she had thought along these lines before, but this was as other a setting as they cold have. "I do want to hear your story, if you'll still tell me."</p><p>"You don't need to make time for me."</p><p>"I want to," Blake assuaged, "assuming Vale is your destination."</p><p>"It—" She hadn't given it any consideration. The train she was on was bound for Vale, but she wasn't necessarily bound for the city despite the padding she offered Winter earlier to put her sister at ease. What reason did she have to disembark? Vale could end up like many other cities she just dipped her toes in or simply passed wholly by. She never imagined she could live out her life in itinerance as she had been doing, but she had never formulated a plan for herself outside of leaving Atlas and staying gone. "—is," she decided on the spot. "I'll be here for the foreseeable future."</p><p>Blake hummed in acceptance and silence befell them again. She could only speak for herself, but she imagined them both exhausted from their exchange. The city blossomed around them as they drew ever close to the station, and it was only then that she could see the true stature of Vale. It was large and towered to the sky in tiers linked by sky bridges and a steady flow of air cabs and sky rails. What Vale lacked in terms of Atlas' modernization and pristine modern architecture, it made up for in its diversity, eccentricities, and vertical ambitions. Atlas built out and up with a mind for efficient use of space and presentation, never towering taller than its most important and imposing buildings and devouring Mantle in its enterprise. Vale built out and up with a mind for expansion that seemed to consider individuality and a communal efficiency that melded with the beautiful nature around it as opposed to displacing it. She could see trees that towered in the city and foliage about that wasn't contained in the way Atlas contained its own in controlled parks that, as a rule, only spanned a city block or two. It stood as a testament to everything she never knew could exist in the world, perhaps even for her. She sat quietly and took it all in.</p><p>The train was steadily decelerating, and as such, her time in motion was coming more certainly to an end. For a time at least. The train was crawling now. "You said that unfamiliar isn't necessarily a bad thing," she started as her eyes lingered on the marvel that was Vale.</p><p>"It doesn't have to be," Blake returned. "Where in the city will you be staying?"</p><p>The question gave her pause. "..I haven't quite worked that out for myself." She smiled, an embarrassment stirring in her for her lack of preparedness. She felt those amber eyes on her, seeing her, knowing more than she was sure Blake would ever let her know. The train had come to a complete stop and passengers began to disembark before Blake spoke again. </p><p>"You.. can stay with me a night or two," the woman offered openly though her voice betrayed an uncertainty, as slight a turn as it was, but she found herself able to recognize the subtle turns in Blake's voice or expression now after her time with the placid and somewhat enigmatic woman.</p><p>"Don't let me put you out," she tried to decline, turning to meet Blake's back as the woman stood to gather her luggage. "I can make my way."</p><p>"Vale can be daunting. Your words.. and I agree with them." The woman turned her, face soft, her expression one of calm with a mind made up that belied an understanding she wasn't sure made sense. But Blake probably knew.. something. That was her tell, despite the little or the lot they had said to the each other. She seemed to always know something. Intimately, even. "And, I said I would make time for you. In the spirit of curiosity and.. because I want to."</p><p>"This has the chance to leave us bitter enemies," she said in a last attempt to find an out. "I can't say that I won't bite your head off after projecting my frustrations on you."</p><p>"Perhaps. But this time I will care, when I ask you to tell me that story."</p><p>"A story maybe better left for a book," she laughed.</p><p>"We'll see," Blake said with a slight laugh in her own voice.</p><p>"Wait for me outside? There's.. something I need to do first."</p><p>"Of course," Blake agreed with a look she couldn't place before she turned to leave. "I'll be just off the ramp."</p><p>She was left to her own devices in the cabin, and she took that moment to heave a great sigh. She thought she'd do well to keep from trains for a while. She had degenerated into a wistful and listless gremlin she realized now at the end of her journey, a glorified running that left her anxious when stationary and placated when in motion. She needed order for herself, and that couldn't happen if she was steadily.. going away, as Blake had phrased it. She felt she owed the woman something, an apology, and her gratitude. She had already given her enough of her own ire, with cause despite that mostly coming from a personal validation, and lightly from Blake's apology despite how she hadn't understood her grievance at the time. Perhaps now they could give each other chance.</p><p>She pulled out her scroll, starting a factory reset before abandoning it on the seat to finish in favor of gathering her luggage. She unzipped the front compartment and pulled out a the box of an unopened scroll. This was a last task she had for when she was as away as she felt she needed to be. All but one of her cards had been set to cancel two days ago and were now useless she imagined in a landfill somewhere. She needed no more ties to anything that kept her chained. She unpackaged the scroll and turned it on. It was ready for use, whenever, and all of her pertinent contacts and passwords were kept securely in her head as well as on a pad of paper in the main compartment of her suitcase.</p><p>The darkening and illumination of her old scroll flashed in her periphery as she put the box away and pocketed her new scroll. She crouched, reaching for the tether, silencing it and dimming the screen before she hid it away under the cushioning of the seat. Any geolocation her service providers would be able to tap into at her father's behest would 'find' her travelling endlessly along the tracks of the Transcontinental until the battery inevitably died far away from where she truly was.</p><p>She rose, gathering her luggage by the handle and looking back to the seat that concealed her fate before she left down the corridor. Alighting from the train, she saw Blake just off the ramp to the side.</p><p>"Ready then?" the woman asked of her when she approached.</p><p>She replied with a hum and a nod of her head. Those amber eyes lingered on her, and she met them completely. She hadn't spoken wholly in jest or in anger when she said she was unsure of whether or not she was growing fond of this woman or growing to hate her. Her peace was ultimately maligned by what she was sure was of Blake's nature, misrepresented by the woman's curiosities as it was. But now, considering the former to be where the truth really sat with her, the desire to allow that woman's nature passage didn't fill her with that loneliness as it did before. Now that it would be meant for her and not to assuage a whimsical curiosity.</p><p>"I do mean it," Blake said just loud enough to be heard as they walked, and she was certain this woman had a sense unnumbered.</p><p>"That's all I ask."</p><p>An aircab was hailed, deftly done so that showed Blake had long been a native of Vale. The luggage was loaded and their bodies followed in turn. As the cab rose higher and higher into the sky, her eyes wandered over the foreign city so far from her own native continent to the north. She took it all in silently, echoing a mantra in her head:</p><p>
  <em>Unfamiliar isn't necessarily a bad thing.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Blake is keeping secrets.<br/>Or withholding truths.</p><p>Thank you for reading, please look forward to more.<br/>And all fireflies received are honored,</p><p>Ivel</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Beringher Heights, Gildan Flats please."</p><p>The ride to the small cluster of brick flats was pleasant, but stilled with an awkward silence that blanketed them since they left the station. The cab rose higher and higher, wove through the other air traffic and skyways in between the towering buildings to a small complex tucked away in a back corner of Vale's second tier. It all seemed spontaneous to her, the way the air traffic worked here as opposed to Atlas' strict and regimented system. She found no method behind the madness, but given their air commute was over twenty minutes long and no collisions had happened near or around them, it was safe to say some method did structure this controlled chaos. The cab pulled off and docked near a stone street designated for foot traffic only. The sign read as Blake had requested: Beringher Heights.</p><p>"This is it," Blake imparted, looking to her briefly before turning to gesture out the window. "Just around the corner."</p><p>"Alright," she replied. The entire interaction seemed rather impersonal in light of the awkward air that settled around them.</p><p>She followed Blake along the cobbled street a handful of paces before she led her right into what seemed to be a small, dark alley. The turn gave way to a small cluster of four or five brick buildings, each two stories with wrought iron fences and railings. Gildan Flats. The entire complex had a rather gothic look to it. Ivy clung to the brick and the whole area was heavily littered with varied yet well kept foliage. And it was dark, save for the rays of light that peeked quite beautifully through the thick boughs of the few large trees that shared the plot. The stone path narrowed as they walked it, and circled around a central patch of dark, lush grass with a few benches before branching further to each individual dwelling. Blake led her through the gate of flat 7304, and with a deft turn of her key, led her inside.</p><p>"Come on in." It was cool inside, much cooler than out of doors given how little sun the building seemed to get. "Would you like tea?" Blake turned and asked her once she propped her suitcase against the wall. "I can put the water on before I show you to the guest room."</p><p>"I would like that, thank you."</p><p>Blake made her way to the stove, pulling a kettle from a cabinet to the right and attending to the task quickly yet with lazy, comfortable movements indicative of someone who was right at home. She stood and watched her work from just beyond the foyer. A brief shrugging off of her jacket revealed lithe and tone arms that tossed it gently over the back of a wooden chair before she moved back to fill and start the pot. The woman took a moment to wipe her hands on a towel before turning back to her. Her easy and somewhat welcoming expression seemed to flow from her and imbue the environment with a more casual air. "Come on," she said through an almost nonexistent smile. "I'll show you to your room so you can make yourself at home."</p><p>She followed Blake as she wove a shortcut through the living room to take the lead down the hallway. She stole glances at the woman's house as she followed her. Dark wood made up the flooring of the entire flat. The furniture had an antique feel to it, from the wooden table and chairs in the kitchen to the black leather furniture with wooden accents in the living room. Truly imposing were the shelves of books that lined the entirety of the living room. She stole another glance back before she followed past a small, wrought iron spiral staircase down the hall. "That's quite the library," she offered.</p><p>"I spend most of my time reading when I'm not busy with work," Blake revealed. "My collection has grown so large I had to have bookshelves installed upstairs. This is you," she said before opening the door at the end of the hall and leading in. The room had a dark palette like the rest of the house with the furnishings following a similar design pattern as the ones in the other parts of the house. "The bath is the first door on your left. Fresh towels are already in there, as well as a guest robe if you want to use it. Toiletries are there too, and new brushes and paste are in the drawer left of the sink, if you want them."</p><p>"Thank you," she said as she wheeled her trunk past Blake and to the foot of the bed. "I'd like a shower before the tea is done, if that's alright."</p><p>"Of course," Blake said, making for the doorway. "I'll keep the pot warm for you," she offered before pulling the door shut a bit behind her.</p><p>Now alone, she took the opportunity to splay herself on the bed and sink into the mattress. She was tired. Finally not being in constant motion, an exhaustion was catching up to her and she could fall asleep right here if she wasn't careful. She ran her fingers through her bangs before resting them over her eyes and allowing more than just exhaustion to catch up to her. What was she doing here, nearly a world away from where she started and boarding with a virtual stranger, a stranger she wasn't even sure she got along with. There was the potential for them to get along, signs were there of the possibility, but that was dependent on whether or not either of them could be on their best behavior. "What are you doing?" she asked herself aloud with a sigh. She didn't want to linger on the question for too long.</p><p>Resigned to the fact that she was already here, she pulled herself from the bed and away from her thoughts. She busied herself at first with hanging a selection of her clothes prone to wrinkling in the wardrobe. She sighed to herself, glad that they were still pressed and presentable. The rest, undergarments, sleepwear, and overly casual things, she kept in her trunk. She stood and stared at her clothes in the wardrobe, a strange nostalgia rising as she remembered standing just like this in front of her own wardrobe in Atlas. Just before she was packing her things away. She only took what was a calculated necessity. Mostly casual wear, slacks and collared shirts, skirts and a few dresses that would mix well with each other and give her a broad selection in what she had to wear. Nothing formal, just things always fit for coffee at lunch or evening tea. She grabbed a pair of slack and then draped a shirt over the hanger before pulling the necessary miscellany from her trunk for a wash and redress.</p><p>She shivered as she let the cool water wash through her long hair and over her skin in the unfamiliar shower. She couldn't help but ask herself again what she was doing, here and in general. Leaving was the hardest thing she never imagined herself doing. More than that, she was.. trusting a foreigner in strange country with a portion of her well being. She couldn't say that she was averse or attached in any way to accepting Blake's offer, and while she had tried to dismiss it at a point, it was a half-hearted attempt. In the end, she accepted on a whim and, loathe as she was to admit it to herself, out of curiosity. If she dared to be honest with herself, there was something compelling to her about her cabin mate. The woman mystified her in a way, conversed with her in one of her niches in a way that was engaging and academic, challenged her in most peeving ways by peering through her and making heads and tails of parts of her in just a glance. Those amber eyes.. how those eyes made her wary, and.. She killed the flow of water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a dark maroon towel around her to dry her hair and skin before dressing slowly. She fastened each button of her shirt with a meticulousness before fastening her pants over her shirt high on her waist. A droplet fell from her bangs onto her front. She toweled it one more time before tying it into a loose bun at the back of her head to finish drying.</p><p>Blake was sitting at the wooden table in the kitchen when she emerged from the hall. A candle was lit in the center, a book was in her hand, and her characteristic placid expression was on her face. It almost seemed content. "Does the offer for tea still stand?"</p><p>"It does," Blake said with that same almost nonexistent smile before standing. "Have a seat," she gestured to the chair across from hers. "Is there any leaf you have in mind? My selection is pretty large."</p><p>"A black tea that blends well with jasmine, if you can," she decided as she took the seat.</p><p>"I think I have something in mind.." Blake trailed as she ran her fingers along the many jars of loose leaf tea in concentration before settling on one with each hand. "Honey?"</p><p>"Please." Blake filled the metal infuser and returned to the table shortly after, setting the cup in front of her and offering her a honey spoon. "Thank you."</p><p>"No worries," Blake said before silence fell over the table. The awkwardness of the silence from the air cab seemed to wash away in the sunlight once they sat foot onto the stone walk of Beringher Heights, and in Blake's calm face before she told her she was to make herself at home. Yet, there was something still charging it as evidenced by averted eyes, Blake's absent fiddling with her bow, and her own mechanical stirring of her honey spoon. She wished something would change.. "How have you liked what you've seen of Vale so far?" Fortune shined on her it seemed.</p><p>"It's an amazing city, from what I've seen of it so far," she started with a relieved smile while keeping her eyes on her cup. The honey was nearly gone from the spoon. "It's very different from Atlas. Seems like individualism can thrive here."</p><p>"'Progressive' has been the popular word to use when describing Vale," Blake said. "It is a place that let's you be yourself."</p><p>"How long have you lived here?" she asked, finally finding the courage to look up and hopefully meet Blake's eyes yet fiddling with her collar in uncertainty.</p><p>"Eight years almost. I moved here for University and decided to stay and pursue a career here," Blake finished before finally dropping her hand from her bow and looking up. That same smile was on her face, but it seemed slight this time as opposed to strained and hidden. "I found myself here," she continued. "The city let me in, accepted me," her eyes fell back to her tea. "Its more home now than where I grew up."</p><p>She hummed before taking a sip of and looking back to her now temperate drink. "I think I began to travel to find a place like that. A place that feels like home."</p><p>"Is that where your story starts?" She looked up to find those amber eyes roaming over her face, undoubtedly reading her expressions and any deviation that quirked up before smoothing back out. There was an expressiveness in Blake's eyes as she sat across from and looked upon her, legs crossed with her chin resting lazily on the back of her wrist. Hey eyes seemed to glow under the soft, warm overhead light. Something in them was reaching toward her.</p><p>"No," she shrugged, taking another drink before continuing. "Leaving Atlas was a whim, where travelling was the excuse I used to put it at as much a distance as I could. And to make it so that it wasn't a hard decision to make. I wasn't leaving it behind if I was travelling. It left the assumption that I would return despite knowing I never would."</p><p>"I can understand that," Blake spoke. "I know how difficult it can be leaving a life behind. I clung to mine in some ways even after almost two years of being here. There came a point where I finally accepted that I needed to build my own life, as an adult and as an independent."</p><p>"I left <em>quite</em> the life behind," she laughed, leveling the woman across from her with an amused look before she continued. "I'm supposed to be starting a fairly coveted job next month. The month after, my classes for my doctoral program start. I'm more than fine leaving all of that, though. It was never what I really wanted. I'm not sure how attached you are to your family, but I was also more than fine with leaving them behind as well. They'll never get proper goodbyes, I don't think." She sighed and finished her tea, replacing the cup carefully and mulling over her thoughts for an elongated moment. Blake seemed content with the silence, content to let her speak. Content to listen to her and to care as she promised. That desire to connect with the woman that sat across from her welled up in her again. She was free to do so now, to give into that temptation knowing it would be truly honored.</p><p>"My father's quite the bastard," she continued. "If the next time I saw him was at his funeral, it'd still be too soon. My mother.. I love her, but I feel as though we should have had a funeral for her years ago. She's more a ghost of her former self that silently haunts the halls of our house with glass of wine always in her hand. She can't really be a mother to me despite how much I want her to be, how much I have wanted her to be. Its just disappointing to even imagine her as a person I can turn to or rely on. She can't be.. but I don't blame her for that. She learned my father was a bastard before any of her children did." She laughed. "What about yours? Between the two of us, who's winning family of the year?"</p><p>Blake laughed. "Given how you described your parents, my honest answer and my easy answer are the same. My parents were good to me, supportive and loving without making me feel smothered, but I wanted, even needed a lot of space. Perhaps I was too in love with being an only child, but I think that played a part in my need for space and independence. It's why I chose to go to school so far away, in part."</p><p>"What'd you study?" She wondered. " In school?"</p><p>"If you really need to ask," Blake said while gesturing at the bookshelves that lined her walls, "I'll give you two guesses."</p><p>"Literature, then."</p><p>"Literature," Blake confirmed.</p><p>"You're well versed in it and its history, I've learned from our conversations," she said. "And you said you teach?"</p><p>"I do. I took up a roll as a professor of literature at my Alma Mater. Beacon University."</p><p>"That's quite a prestigious role to have. I had considered Beacon for my studies, but things turned out otherwise."</p><p>Blake hummed at that. "I want to hear more of your story. We can continue in the living room if you want. Here," she offered, gathering the now empty cups on the table. "These chairs aren't the most comfortable for long conversation."</p><p>"That's fine," she accepted. "My legs may have been on the verge of falling asleep," she added before standing and making her way toward the couch. She sat casually off the center, back straight and one leg crossed over the other. It was much more comfortable than the kitchen chair. She idly began massaging her left wrist, soothing an almost nonexistent ache there from an old fracture. The old ache very rarely made itself known, and oftentimes she found herself massaging her wrist when she was at a loss of what to do with her hands.</p><p>"Is it too cool in here?" Blake asked as she sat down and pulled her legs cross beneath her on the couch. "The flat doesn't see a lot of sun, even in the summer, so it can get a bit chilly in here."</p><p>"This is fine," she said. "After living in Atlas for two decades and a half, cool isn't necessarily a bother." She turned her hand in her grasp and faced her palm up before resuming her massage of the appendage. There was undoubtedly more to her story, but with the intermission that came from their relocation, she didn't know how to start again.</p><p>"You play piano."</p><p>He left hand was gently lifted, grasped underneath by Blake's right and placed on the woman's knee before her other hand came to trace the callouses on her index finger with a delicate precision. "Once upon a time.."</p><p>"You don't play anymore?" Blake questioned as she continued to trace the callous of each finger. She was at her middle finger now.</p><p>"No," she sighed as something started around her navel. It was slight, yet it was there. "My father insisted on me learning. I played for years religiously, but there was a point when all the joy I felt playing was taken away from me." Blake was at her ring finger now. "My father was adamant about me taking up all of the hobbies that I did. I was skilled enough to play piano professionally, thought about it at one point, but a music minor doesn't compliment a business major that well." She laughed at that and shook her head. Blake was at her little finger now.</p><p>"You laugh, almost in derision when you talk about something personal," Blake spoke. "Not just here, but on the train too. Why?"</p><p>"Because sometimes I can't believe my life," she answered. "How I got here, or what I've put up with." Blake was retracing her motion at her thumb now.</p><p>"How did you get here?" Blake asked before releasing her hand back to her and fixing her with a soft yet piercing gaze that she met wholly. "It's like you always almost say it, but you speak around it, saying it in things that you don't say."</p><p>"Maybe even I don't know the answer to that question." She wasn't sure if that was a lie or the truth. She pulled a leg beneath her on the couch, two knees nearly touching now, and leaned back into the leather cushions in comfort. "I can't tell you my whole story until you say what it is you haven't been saying," she said. "I've seen your eyes and your aggravatingly non-existent expressions that are their own unique expressions unto themselves. Your curiosity.. it was familiarity when you first walked into that cabin, wasn't it?"</p><p>Blake took a moment, lowering her eyes to her lap as uncertainty flashed briefly through them before she looked up again, resolved. "It was."</p><p>"Enlighten me then," she requested.</p><p>Blake sighed and ran her hands through her short, black hair before answering. "I was coming back from visiting a colleague in Argus. It was a pleasant trip, fruitful even." Blake relaxed her head back onto the cushion of the couch. "I even found a couple of first edition books that I was excited to add to my collection once I came back to Vale.. I guess I was just surprised to find that I'd be sharing a cabin with Weiss Schnee when I transferred lines."</p><p>She didn't realize she was holding her breath until she loosed it quietly through her nose. She could have envisioned this. It wasn't even far-fetched given that, while her life was private, her existence was still very public knowledge as Jacques Schnee's daughter and heiress. But something abut Blake's confession made her wary. Why her of all the company she had on the Transcontinental, of all of the people she had interacted with even off those rails. She imagined others could have recognized her and just held their tongues and not acknowledged as much, but why was this woman the one to act of this recognition? "Did you expect more or less that what you've come to know of me?"</p><p>"More or less isn't right.. I expected something different, I guess," Blake said after a moment. "I eventually discarded my expectations altogether."</p><p>"Disappointed," she laughed.</p><p>"No," Blake stated almost adamantly, compelling her to try and catch the woman's eyes, distant and fixed on the bookshelf in front of them. "There was a point, after we talked about <em>Loveless</em> and Theopolis Shay, where I discarded anything that had to do with an expectation and decided to view you as a person as opposed to an idea, get to know you as you were."</p><p>"Find something worth the effort?" she asked. "In me, the grotesquely affluent heiress with a short temper and a derisive mind about herself?"</p><p>"I found enough worth offering my home to," Blake answered, meeting her eyes again.</p><p>A moment passed between them, eyes locked onto each other as they both seemed to search the other's for something, and something stirred in her again. Their knees had come to touch at some point, and a tension of unknown origin was palpable in the air. The sun had dipped down low into the sky and only a faint orange glow filtered through the curtained windows. It was getting late in the evening if she had to guess. They'd been talking comfortably for hours, like two old friends catching up or two fast friends getting to know each other. It was nice, and easy now that they were allowing it to be. Now that they were peeling away those ambivalent layers they had been shrouding themselves in. It was easy, and she wanted something for herself that was uncomplicated like all the things she had ever known. "Found in me what you've known in yourself?" she asked, pulled into that amber gaze as she was. "In part."</p><p>"Yes," Blake said over a quiet laugh, shifting in her seat slightly for more comfort before turning her gaze back in front of her, resuming the touch of their knees. And she just sat there and continued to look at the profile of this woman's face. "I sensed that our stories share in something despite being quite different."</p><p>"And do you still feel that way?"</p><p>"I do. More than I did before even, now that I've sat here and listened to yours."</p><p>"Will you tell me yours?" She asked. "I'd like to know, to listen. And I feel there's more of those things that we seem to not be saying."</p><p>"I can." Blake seemed uncertain. "I will, if you want to know. We've gotten along rather well today, haven't we?"</p><p>"A shocking development, I know," she joked. "But it's gotten late, and my time out of motion has let my exhaustion catch up to me." The sun was well below the horizon line, and all that illuminated them was the soft, warm light from the kitchen. "I think I'm going to call it here for the night," she finalized, rising from the couch through the dissipating tension that lingered in the air.</p><p>"I'll be up for a while still," Blake imparted with a slight smile as she turned to grab the book from the table beside the couch before turning back to her. "Reading, and all."</p><p>"It seems to suit you," she smiled as she made her way to the mouth of the hall, turning before she headed down it. "Good night, Blake."</p><p>"Good night."</p><p>She now found herself in the guest room, <em>her</em> room for the next two nights, ridding herself of the casual attire in favor of a pale blue nightgown. She took the time and sat in the arm chair to braid her hair before bed. Fastening the tie around the end, she paused and brought her left hand in front of her. Blake had traced each callous on each finger as they talked, and she retraced the paths with her own hand now. A brief exchange, but one that started that same feeling around her navel as she remembered it. It was a tender gesture, personal even. She appreciated the chill in the house as she climbed under the covers and wrapped them around herself to as that feeling slowly subsided. She was more inclined to cooler temperatures as opposed to warm ones. There was an overarching pleasantness to the hours they spent talking, and she felt lighter after having the opportunity to rid her mind of varied bothers. Sleep would come swiftly. A thought occurred to her in that moment.</p><p>She removed herself from the blankets enough to retrieve her scroll from the bedside table, and from memory dialed a number. Once, twice it rang before,</p><p>"<em>Hello? May I ask who is calling?"</em></p><p>"Klein, its me," she said softly.</p><p>"<em>Oh! Weiss, it's lovely to hear from you. Have you been well?"</em></p><p>"I have."</p><p>"<em>This isn't your usual number."</em></p><p>"I've taken the opportunity to get a new scroll. I wanted you to have the number, but.. no one else."</p><p>"<em>Not even your sister?"</em></p><p>"I talked to Winter just today," she revealed. "I do want her to have it, but I want to have some space for myself for a while. Can you give it her when you feel she needs it?"</p><p>"<em>I can Miss, but that might be sooner rather than later.."</em></p><p>"What makes you say that, Klein?"</p><p>"<em>Your Father.. asked me to call Miss Winter today in hopes that she could convey that he wanted to speak to you. He has been trying to call you all day. I suppose that's why he ventured to reach you by other means."</em></p><p>"I see.. You can give it to her, and I guess I should be expecting a call from her in the near future."</p><p>"<em>Indeed you should," </em>Klein agreed."<em>I've heard your Mother called her in regards to you the other day. Your sister is not one to leave much to imagination in such circumstances, especially now with your Father requesting calls made to her regarding you."</em></p><p>"I know, Klein," she said softly. "I know."</p><p>"<em>You are well, Miss? I don't wish to hear of you ill where I can't take care of you."</em></p><p>"I am, Klein. Thank you for asking. I arrived in Vale just today, but it has been quite the trip."</p><p>"<em>Do tell me about it when you get the time. I take it you're headed to bed soon."</em></p><p>"I am. I just wanted to call and let you know that I am doing well."</p><p>"<em>I'm glad to hear it. Do take care of yourself Weiss, and have a good night."</em></p><p>"I will."</p><p>"<em>Promise?"</em></p><p>"I promise, Klein," she smiled. "Good night."</p><p>The guarantee of sleep left her as swiftly as her exhaustion could take her just minutes before.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading, and please look forward to more.</p>
<p>All fireflies received are honored,</p>
<p>Ivel</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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